Since we began this blog we have been highlighting FCC staff in a series of profiles. As March is Women’s History Month, we will be focusing on some of our female colleagues and talking to them about their experiences as professionals, and as women, working in public service at the FCC.
Eloise Gore, Associate Bureau Chief, Media Bureau
Years at FCC: 13
Eloise Gore considers herself lucky. Beginning her career with the federal government as an intern in 1978, she benefited from both the barrier-breaking women of the generation before her and the government’s early efforts at diversity. As an attorney, first for the Federal Trade Commission, then the Commerce Department, and here at the FCC for the past 13 years, she recalls sitting across the table from attorneys in the private sector that at times were all white men.
In those years, in the middle-late seventies, the government was one of the places that women could go, because the government was much more accepting of women, as attorneys, as other kinds of professionals, than the private sector was… so it would be frequently the case that those of us who were in the government would be in negotiations with outside law firms and they would be all these men in suits. And we were the only ones that had women.
She is proud of the way that women, and men, are given the opportunity to thrive here at the FCC, especially with regard to balancing their families with career.
Women who want to have families, who want to have children, are very supported particularly by the government. Again that was something that the government did first: to allow women a chance to go and be a mother and have day care so that they could come back and have their children near them.
One of those women is one that she noted as being one she most admires.
My immediate past boss, Monica Desai, who was the head of the media bureau during the DTV transition and she is really the exemplar of the kind of woman who can juggle having not only children, but two rather young children… she managed to pack 48 hours in a 24 hour day. I don’t know how she did it. And she remained calm, and nice, and pleasant, and supportive to us and to her staff.
Of course, she also admires her mother, Gerry Gore, a former advertising professional who at 90 is an active volunteer, zipping around New York City in her sports car.
I never felt that there was anything I couldn’t do because I was a girl/a lady/a woman. You know, I always felt like everything was possible. And I think that it’s very good to be able to convey that and I really do see that with the women – the young women and the older women – around me.
Her story is a great example of how far women have come since the FCC was founded in 1934. "I think that the government has been good for women, and women have been good for the government."